Mozart
by CarsAndTelephones
Summary: After Uhura has to drop by Kirk's quarters, she comes to see Kirk a little differently. One-shot. Kirk and Uhura FRIENDSHIP only :


_AN__: A short piece that I wrote down months and months and months ago, and didn't remember until now. So here it is, dusted off and revised slightly. It's kinda crack. Okay, __**definitely**__ crack. Concerns Kirk's taste in music. Please review!!! It makes my day kinda like apple pie, kittens, or clean laundry! And criticize!! I always want to get better!_

_Disclaimer__: Sadly, I do not own Star Trek._

**Mozart**

Uhura sighed.

Usually she avoided this particular section of the ship whenever she could, but he _had_ insisted she give the report directly to him the moment she had finished no matter where he might be.

She huffed another sigh before rounding the corner into the officer's residence hall—specifically toward the captain's rooms.

She hadn't been looking forward to this experience. She had no idea what to expect from Kirk's quarters, but she knew whatever it was, she probably wouldn't enjoy it. It was probably full of tributes to himself, or porn, or… Uhura didn't even want to consider what else filled the room of James T. Kirk or what exactly he spent his off-hours doing.

Turning another corner, she steeled herself for whatever was to come and then stopped as a peculiar sound reached her ears. She would have thought it was the sounds of someone being tortured except that she could hear the distinct wailing of an ancient electric guitar in the background.

She stepped forward hesitantly hoping to God that whatever the sound was, it wasn't coming from where she thought it was coming.

But as she made her way cautiously down the hallway, PADD tightly in hand, the continuing pounding of the—dare she call it _music? _—became steadily louder as she approached her destination until she was absolutely certain that the screeching came from behind the door of the exact room where she needed to be.

_Did he even bother to soundproof his room?_ She grumbled to herself. Cursing under her breath, she punched the pad by the door to indicate her presence.

Nothing happened.

She punched the keypad harder as if it would make all the difference.

The door remained immobile as the banging of what she could only assume were a pair of stomping elephants rattled the floor beneath her feet.

Scowling slightly, she pressed the keypad and held it down, almost tapping her foot with annoyance.

But when the door finally slid open, nothing could have prepared her for the racket that came from within. Later, she could have sworn that the noise coming from the room blasted her backward at least five feet with its force but at the moment, her brain went blank as the PADD clattered to her feet and she clapped both hands to her ears, screwing up her face in an effort to block the pandemonium out. The sheer volume of noise coming from within the room was enough to make anyone fall over backwards, have a heart attack, or simply insert a fork in their eye in an effort to end the pain.

And yet, Uhura saw when she squinted open her eyes once more, in spite of it all, there stood Kirk in a pair of sweatpants and a tight fitting black shirt, cool as if the sound of a thousand rhinos stampeding were _not_ currently invading the space of his room. He mouthed something that Uhura couldn't hear, one eyebrow quirked.

"What?" she shouted, taking the hands from her ears just slightly. She regretted this decision almost instantly as the volume redoubled.

Kirk leaned forward and yelled something at her, but she still couldn't make it out.

"_What?"_ she repeated louder.

Kirk rolled his eyes and pressed a second keypad just inside of the door. The volume decreased from earthquake inducing to dead silent in a disturbing split second. Uhura removed her hands fully from her ears, the sudden silence somehow deafening.

"What?" he said when she still hadn't spoken.

Uhura shook her head experimentally, trying to stop the ringing, her hands still kept warily close to her ears. "Damn it Kirk, I think you almost shattered my rib cage. What the _hell_ are you listening to?"

He looked mildly offended. "Metallica."

She stared at him blankly. "What?"

"Metallica," he said, more insistently. "You know—Metallica? Master of Puppets? Ride the Lightening? Kill 'Em All? _That_ Metallica."

When she continued to look at him with a mixture of disgust and disbelief, he threw up his hands. "Old Earth stuff. Heavy metal. Used to be popular around the year 2000 give or take. You've never _heard_ of them?"

Uhura didn't even bother to answer. Stooping to retrieve the fallen PADD, she picked it up and pressed it into his chest. "Here," she said, "Your report. It's all finished."

"Oh," he said in mild surprise, staring down at it and beginning to scroll through the contents, "Thanks. Just in time, Lieutenant." He half-turned, making to shut the door once more but Uhura stopped him, suddenly curious.

"You don't intend to tell me that you can actually _work_ with that crap in the background, can you?" she said dubiously, waving to indicate the din still coming from Kirk's abused speakers.

Kirk fixed her with an irritated glare. "Watch what you're calling _crap_, Lieutenant, they're vintage!"

"I don't care what they are—just do me a favor and keep them off the bridge, okay?"

Kirk simply shook his head in mild annoyance. Uhura was inclined to do the same thing but she refrained—just barely. Instead she gave him a brief smile and turned to leave, her task complete. Kirk thanked her again and flicked her a casual salute with his first two fingers, sliding his door shut once more. As she made her way down the hall, the pounding of the Metal-whatever-the-hell-it-was-called continued sending mild tremors through the padded floors, and she found herself wondering how Kirk had any vestige of his hearing left after the display she had just witnessed.

But she couldn't help but think that this kind of music was entirely characteristic of Kirk. Spontaneous, wild, loud, faintly annoying… It summed him up perfectly.

……

Two weeks later, Uhura found herself walking down the same hallway, another PADD held warily in hand, alert for any of the signs of the now familiar floor thumping. Of course, she thought, Kirk _had_ to label this report as urgent and of course she would _have_ to deliver it to him directly in his quarters. She couldn't fathom why he wanted these reports so badly that he couldn't wait until he was on duty, but whatever the reason in his wild and unpredictable mind, she didn't fancy having her skeleton rattled once again by electric screaming and death metal. So it was with trepidation that she walked down the corridor to his rooms.

But as she approached, quite a different sound reached her ears. It was no less loud than her previous encounter with this particular hallway. Nor was it any less floor shaking. And yet it was completely, totally, and wholly…

Unexpected.

For the sound coming from Kirk's room couldn't have been any _more_ different than the clangor of the band two weeks previous.

A symphony. Kirk was listening to a classical symphony.

Utterly perplexed, teeth chattering slightly from the excess of volume, Uhura approached Kirk's door and pressed the button down hard. She had learned her lesson from her former experience.

The volume lessened suddenly after a minute and a faint "Come in" sounded from within the room.

She slid the door open to the renewed sound of an orchestra filling the tiny room to every corner. She looked around, in search of Kirk whom she did not initially see, her eyes traveling from a shelf on the wall filled with actual printed books, their covers peeling from use and pages yellowed, to a small and unkempt bed, the covers tossed to a state of no recovery, to a desk cluttered with stacks and stacks of unfiled reports, and finally to the floor where Kirk lay, flat on his back, feet thrown up on a chair, eyes closed and hands resting almost peacefully on his chest.

Uhura blinked.

She had never seen Kirk sit this still before. It was almost unnerving—unnerving as was the fact that he was blasting ancient symphonies from his speakers. She stepped into the room hesitantly.

He cracked an eye open as she approached. "Hey, Uhura," he grinned upside-down at her in greeting. "Got that report?"

"Um—yes," she replied distractedly, the PADD in her hands long since forgotten, "Kirk—what exactly are you listening to?"

He settled back, closing his eyes once more. "Mozart," he said simply.

"Mozart?" she repeated, not quite certain she had heard correctly.

"Mozart," he confirmed. "Symphony number forty in G minor. Movement one."

"No offense, but—why?" she said, baffled.

He opened his eyes fully this time, and looked at her in surprise. "What—you have a problem with Mozart, too?" he said, faint humor tingeing his tone.

"Well—no—I just… Didn't expect it, is all." She shrugged.

"Mozart's badass," he said, a hint of incredulousness in his voice. "Now shut up for a second—this part's really good."

"But—"

"Uhura, shut up!"

Uhura lapsed into a bemused silence and turned her full attention to the music sounding from the walls. The violins rose in a crescendo and Uhura could just imagine the orchestra before her, bows flashing madly as they kept perfect time with their conductor. She let the music sweep her away for a moment, the swoops and dives of the notes intriguing and infuriating her at the same time. It was surprising, and idiosyncratic, loud, and somehow playfully subtle. The last few notes of the movement sounded boldly and she found herself wishing that she could replay it—catch the nuances, predict it better… _know_ it completely…

But Kirk addressed her instead. "See?" he said, as if proving a long obvious point. "Badass."

Uhura raised her eyebrows. "Yeah," she said, a faint smile curving her lips, "yeah, he is. Thanks, Kirk. I'll leave this on your desk, shall I?"

Kirk merely grunted and she slid the report onto an unoccupied edge of his desk and turned to leave.

And as she made her way down the hallway once more, it suddenly struck her why Mozart and James T. Kirk made so much sense after all.

_AN—PS, no offense to any Metallica fans out there! Honestly, they're the only heavy metal band that I remotely know—I haven't actually listened to any of their stuff. I just Google searched "Best of Metallica" and wrote down some of their songs. Just didn't think they'd be quite Uhura's thing, you know?_


End file.
